Showing posts with label activism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label activism. Show all posts

Saturday, November 6, 2010

Love Does Not Imply Pacifism

"Tactics based solely on morality can only succeed when you are dealing with people who are moral or a system that is moral."
- Malcolm X -

“Non-violence is not a moral principle but a strategy. And there is no moral goodness in using an ineffective weapon."
- Nelson Mandela -

“The Jews who participated in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, even those who went on what they thought were suicide missions, had a higher rate of survival than those who did not fight back. Never forget that."
- Derrick Jensen -



The Walls of the Slaughterhouses are Already Transparent

The animal rights movement is "breaking" the walls of the slaughterhouses for more than 30 years. The walls of the slaughterhouses are already transparent.

You tell them the facts, and you show them the horrible reality, and it doesn’t help.

We will never understand how people can eat the flesh of someone that has been bred in misery and pain but they do.
Most humans don’t even understand what we are talking about.
Humans’ moral rule is "Do whatever you like as long as you can get away with it".

Not anymore! This is a call for the annihilation movement to rise.



* Text taken from the Only One Solution website.

Friday, November 5, 2010

Trends

The campaign against fur was once considered to be the most successful campaign ever by the animal rights movement. But after almost a decade of being branded politically incorrect, fur is back in fashion, coming in all colors, shapes and sizes.

The Fur Council claims that in 1985 only 42 fashion designers included fur in their collections. 20 years later the number has risen to more than 500.
The fur industry resurgence in the last 5 years is an irrefutable evidence of the sole significance of trends in human behavior and public political views.

It is not empathy, rationality, concern and ethics that dictate humans’ behavior, it is fashion, in this case ambiguously speaking. It is trends, not rational and practical compassion.

In spite of Al gore, Cindy Crawford, the Atkins diet, super size me and so many other trendy examples, activists still rely on trends and on celebrities to carry on moral and social justice campaigns.

Animal rights activists know just as we do how provisional and arbitrary trends are and that the same people that are against slaughtering animals for their fur, turn around and eat their flesh, or wear their skin.

Disappointment after disappointment, but the activists never learn.
They cover their eyes and ears because they can't control their urge for a short term goal.

The expectation that the same principle of action only using the good celebrities in a smart and sexy way will change the world is false and ridiculous. The same methods that are responsible for so much of what is wrong with the world can’t be the solution too.

Instead of looking for the current trends and how to use them for their goals, instead of dividing the world to good and bad celebrities.

Animal rights activist should ask themselves what are the chances for a vegan non-speciesist world when the moral message becomes a minor by product of the current trend and the mega celebrities’ reputation improvement efforts.



* Text taken from the Only One Solution website.

Nonviolence

The non violent approach which is both speciesist and ironically extremely violent.

The non violent approach is speciesist because it is non violent towards humans but at the same time and as a consequence it is violent towards non human animals.
It gives humans an automatic and evident power to decide whether or not they are willing to stop torturing. It is not supposed to be the abusers' decision and the animal rights activists let the abusers make this decision, a decision that regards other creatures' suffer.

The non violent approach is violent because refusing to use violence to stop much more violence is actually supporting violence. From the moment you are aware of the possibility to stop someone’s suffer using violence and you refuse to use it, you choose suffer.

The speciesist and violent approach is in the concept that the one and only duty of activists is to convince the abusers to stop abusing and not to stop the abuse.
As far as most activists think, their variety of options is expressed in persuasion methods only. The basic approach is hardly ever questioned. Convincing people to divert their diet is the only option, the differences are in the ways to do it.
If something didn't work they will try another but all the options have the same in common, they all are different tactics with the same strategy, to convince the abusers to stop abusing, but not to stop the abusers.

When you maintain a non violent approach, if you fail to convince a non-vegan speciesist, he is free to go and continue the abuse.
It shouldn’t be their choice. You don’t ask the tortures if they would like to stop torturing. You just stop them.

We know it is not easy as "just" stopping them, but it is what we’ve got to do. It begins with you realizing the absurdity. With you stop asking the oppressors to stop oppressing and start to find a way to stop it all.



* Text taken from the Only One Solution website.

Saturday, October 30, 2010

Asleep

A world which battery cages could have been invented in, is a world that unlegislating them won't cure anything.

The animal rights movement must wake up.
Society is irrevocably speciesist and immoral.

Gains made are easily reversed.
History has shown that working within the cruel system and winning small battles for the animals proved to be irrelevant. The animals’ carnage continues.
Animal abuse will go on until mankind becomes extinct, or the planet is destroyed.
It’s time to open our eyes and admit that we shall never overcome.
The opposition is stronger, better financed, and more numerous than animal defenders.

If you are only interested in clearing your conscience, you better stay in the conventional movement.
If you are interested in liberating billions of animals and humans from life full of suffer... there is only one solution.



* Much of the text taken from the Only One Solution website.

Absurd (vivisection)

Animal rights activists claim that vivisection is absurd because it is unscientific and unsafe for humans.

Don't you think it is absurd that animal rights activists are fighting for good science instead of a sufferless world?

Using the unscientific argument is speciesism. Non humans’ suffer is the strongest case against vivisection, a fact that is totally absent in the anti vivisection movement.

It is a moral issue not a scientific one. If you have reached the point that you hang on the few doctors that go against animal experiments as your best case against vivisection, then the animals have a problem that no alternative could solve.

Problems should be solved from the roots and the root is an historical crime against weaker creatures in an excuse of human superiority. The problem is in the way humans see animals not in the way scientists see science.

If activists believe humans are too insensitive towards non-human suffering, then they must fight against them, not for them.



* Much of the text taken from the Only One Solution website.

Rodents (vivisection)

85% of animal experiments are preformed on rodents.

Still... it is not accidental that the animal rights movement unproportionately demonstrates experiments on specific species which represent only 2% of the total number of animal experiments.

Animal rights activists don't believe it is possible that humans will be rational and moral to oppose the torture of a creature regardless of his species.

They know that it is easier to influence humans when showing them animals that humans see as their pets like dogs and cats, cute animals like rabbits, and monkeys that are similar to humans more than any other species.

If the animal rights movement is failing in saving humans' closest species , what chance do mice, rats and guinea pigs have?



* Text taken from the Only One Solution website.

Friday, October 29, 2010

Eating Meat is Just a Symptom

To convince someone to go vegan as an attempt to save the world is similar to an attempt to save a sinking ship by tossing out water with a teaspoon.

The world is not just an unfair and cruel place, everything is rotten from the roots.
The world is too sick, and life itself is the disease.

Wake up!
A world, that battery cages could have been invented in, is a world that unlegislating them won’t cure anything.

Battery cages are just a symptom. Eating meat is just symptom.
Two of the severest ones, but still symptoms.

The only way to stop the symptoms of the problem is to identify the main root cause and directly work to abolish it.

Stop dealing with the symptoms and start dealing with the causes.



* Much of the text taken from the Only One Solution website.

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Cognitive Dissonance among Vegans

Consider the following:
A. Most vegan activists will agree that humans - as all species - are selfish and violent by nature and that most of them do not care about nonhuman suffering.
B. Most vegan activists dedicate their activity time to vegan education and believe animal exploitation will end within 100 years.[1]

Don't you agree these two cognitions are inconsistent with each other? It is impossible to convince humans - who hold the freedom of choice - to behave against their own nature.
Vegan education is based on moral justice, while humans' choice is based on self interest. In our case, these are two contradictory things.[2]

It's so frustrating to admit, but the reason this dissonance is so common among activists is selfishness (which we all struggle with):
"Let's be honest. The animal rights movement as we now know it will never become a revolutionary struggle because the representatives of the oppressed enjoy enough privilege from the system they oppose to prevent them from supporting, let alone engaging in actual revolutionary activity that would risk those comforts."
--Rod Coronado, "Hypocrisy Is Our Greatest Luxury" (no longer available online)

The Only One Solution Manifest begins its attention to vegan education with the next paragraph:
"Have you ever wondered why is it so hard to convince someone to go vegan?
We don’t need to tell you how morally initiatory and how nutritiously simple veganism is. So how come it is so hard, even for many people who define themselves as "animal lovers", to become vegans? It is a question we have constantly asked ourselves when we were "vegan converters". Could it be that the obstacle to veganism is the messengers? Not enough health food stores? The price of soy milk? Not enough vegan celebrities? Not enough visual evidence about what is going on in factory farms? You know it is not any of these.
The question we are asking ourselves now in the only one solution movement is how come animal rights activists don’t see that the problem is with the addressees?"

Most activists probably know deep down it is not the messengers but the addressees, but as Rod Coronado put it so well, the price is too high.


[1] According to recent survey (which is no longer available online) that was first presented in the 12th International Vegan Festival, held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, July 22-25, 2009.

[2] Some people would argue that acting morally is part of anyone's self interest, but this is not true. For most people - morality is a negligible consideration, it is important for them to feel peaceful with their choice. Meaning, they will seek (and find) a justification to continue with their violent acts ("animals in nature kill and eat other animals all the time", for example) and continue to ignore the most basic moral principle ("
Do not do to others what you would not want them to do to you").

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

"I do it only out of duty"

Number of insightful quotations taken from the page "Words of Wisdom" on http://www.whyculturedmeat.org:


"Tactics based solely on morality can only succeed when you are dealing with people who are moral or a system that is moral."
--Malcolm X

“Non-violence is not a moral principle but a strategy. And there is no moral goodness in using an ineffective weapon."
--Nelson Mandela

"... humans are much more social than rational creatures. In everyday life on average, people try to merge into society, behave correspondingly, and afterwards rationalize their behaviour, i.e. find "rational" reasons why they act as they act. This observation is so obvious that it does not seem to merit quoting empirical support."
--Martin Balluch

"Let's be honest. The animal rights movement as we now know it will never become a revolutionary struggle because the representatives of the oppressed enjoy enough privilege from the system they oppose to prevent them from supporting, let alone engaging in actual revolutionary activity that would risk those comforts."
--Rod Coronado

"People involved in a revolution don't become part of the system; they destroy the system."
--Malcolm X

"Animal liberation is the most difficult liberation struggle of all because speciesism is primordial and universal. Speciesism is arguably the first of any form of domination or hierarchy and it has spread like a deadly virus throughout the entire planet and all of human history. The problem is not limited to Western culture or to the modern world, such that there is some significant utopian past or radical alternative to recover. The problem is the human species itself, which but for rare exceptions is violent, destructive, and imperialistic. Universally, humans have vested interests in exploiting animals and think they have a God-given right to do so. To change these attitudes is to change the very nerve center of human consciousness. That is our task - no more and no less."
--Steve Best

"Animal exploitation and murder are no more the result of a particular belief system, political system, or economic system than are human exploitation and murder. To think that they are is to mistake the symptom for the disease. The disease is selfishness, greed, arrogance, and a lack of compassion. As Lord Acton told us, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Human history demonstrates that whenever a system (economic, political, religious, whatever) is installed that is designed to end, or at least ameliorate, human oppression, it is fairly quickly corrupted into a new mechanism for the same old oppression. Communism, is one example, institutional Christianity another. Political and economic democracy slow the process by distributing power widely enough to prevent its concentration while placing a significant share of it in the hands of those most vulnerable to oppression. As Winston Churchill reminded us, "Democracy is the worst system of governance ever devised except for all of the other systems that have been tried from time to time." Radical social revolutions simply put a new class of oppressors in charge. I wish it were not so, but it is."

"To put it bluntly, we enslave and murder animals because it is in our self-interest to do so and we have the power to get away with it, not because of capitalism, liberal democracy, the Judeo-Christian dominionist tradition, or any of the other reasons so commonly given. These are merely after-the-fact justifications. We enslave and murder animals because we can and we enjoy the results. Change the political or economic system, and that fundamental fact will still be operative, and the enslavement and murder of animals will continue unaffected except that it will now be justified by a different set of theories, one that is compatible with the new system."
--Norm Phelps, Until there are no beings whom we still define as "other"

"I recall cutting my philosophical teeth on Marx, and then discovering Nietzsche, who confirmed my deeper biases toward pessimistic views on humanity. I've done a hell of a lot of work on AR and veganism here in El Paso and have been constantly in the media, doing interviews, and organizing groups and actions. But it cuts against my grain and I do it only out of duty."
--Steve Best, Until there are no beings whom we still define as "other"

Friday, March 26, 2010

Only One Solution

The Only One Solution may be the most important website there is. It gives you everything you need in order to understand why humans must be annihilated from this world. And that's not all, it also argues that it would be better if all species were to be annihilated.

The Only One Solution Manifest begins with the following paragraphs:

It is not easy to explain your most fundamental perceptions and ideas. It feels so clear, so obvious and right that ironically it is hard to pass it forth. Yet this is the goal of this manifest, this website and the only one solution movement as a whole, an explanation why the only deep-rooted, fundamental, radical, comprehensive and true solution to the world’s suffer is to destroy it.


It is a rather banal and self evident idea that many activists think of at some point in their lives, but we feel that mostly it pops up in times of despair and disbelief while it should be the primal concept at all times regardless of the state of affairs within the animal rights movement or with your own activism.
Such a fundamental and basic philosophy shouldn’t be built on a temporary situation or episodic mood. That is why we wrapped the idea with arguments that seek to construct a serious and comprehensive case for the annihilation idea. We want that what is now probably no more than a feeling or an opinion, will change into a purpose and then into action.


Please don’t automatically dismiss the idea as a cliché or a slogan, or an out of reach fantasy and get back to your familiar position in your organization. You are an activist because in some point of your life you realized how much suffer exists in the world and you have decided that you must stop it. The only one solution initiative is not romantic naiveness of inexperienced activists or grown fantasists. It is a rational and realistic quest for a sufferless world.
Even if you have doubts at least read the whole manifest. You may get new perspectives and new ideas, new arguments and new questions to confront with. The worst thing that can happen is a waste of a few hours, the best thing is that you will decide that from now on, you devote your life to end all the suffer in the world.



After reading the entire manifest, what is your opinion - would it be better if all species were to be annihilated, not only humans?